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Beltway on Display: American Politics at the U.N.

When Richard C. Holbrooke took over as Security Council president for January, he declared it the month of Africa. But council members have been getting more than an education on important African issues, from an AIDS epidemic to multiple civil wars. They have also been absorbing some lessons in American politics, election-year-style.

First, Mr. Holbrooke turned over his gavel and the Security Council spotlight to Vice President Al Gore, who many expect will appoint Mr. Holbrooke to be his secretary of state if he is elected president in the fall. Mr. Gore, opening a daylong debate on Jan. 10 about the AIDS crisis, demonstrated his informed interest in a burning international issue and how he might project American leadership in an international arena.

Then it was the turn of Senator Jesse Helms, the North Carolina Republican who is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which can make or break presidential appointments and long delayed Mr. Holbrooke's own. Mr. Helms basked in the glow of two days of attention as he lectured the council last Thursday, at Mr. Holbrooke's invitation, on what he sees as the United Nations' shortcomings, even warning that the United States might withdraw from the organization. The next day, Mr. Helms held a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the same theme in Manhattan.

Today, Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright will occupy the council president's chair for a star-studded debate on Africa's biggest war, in Congo. Half a dozen or more African presidents will be in town, including the elusive Laurent Kabila, Congo's president.

Fourteen other Security Council members, and those who track United Nations affairs, are watching all this with fascination, and some ambivalence. For some, the spectacle of a staid chamber being turned over to theatrical meetings for an extended period of time is troubling.

Edward C. Luck, author of ''Mixed Messages: American Politics and International Organization 1919-1999,'' said that hijacking a month's agenda ''is sort of abusing what the Security Council does.''

''This is the kind of American hubris that leads to a reaction from other countries,'' he said.

But diplomats who have taken part in these sessions say that the mercurial Mr. Holbrooke, whatever his motives, has not only brought some sizzle to the council, but has also contributed immeasurably to its understanding of significant facts of life. Both Mr. Helms' hostility to the United Nations and Africa's unending wars fall into that category, diplomats say.

Furthermore, Mr. Holbrooke's carefully orchestrated meetings and his nonstop hospitality to influential members of Congress -- several a week -- may have made the United Nations safe again for American politicians.

Four years ago, during the last American presidential election, the United Nations was anathema. Its secretary general, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, was the butt of jokes and lampoons by Republicans on his unfamiliar foreign name. The Clinton administration quickly reduced its public involvement in the organization.

''This is the beginning of a new chapter for America's involvement and engagement in the affairs of the United Nations,'' said Senator Joseph R. Biden of Delaware, the ranking Democrat on the foreign relations committee. Senator Helms agreed and, after a lavish dinner with diplomats at the Metropolitan Club on Friday night, told those around him that he had met extraordinarily interesting people, had learned a lot and hoped they had, too. He was wearing a blue-and-white United Nations cap.

At the United Nations Association, an independent American support and research organization, Jeffrey Laurenti said the last week showed that ''even the most conservative senators can visit the U.N. now without fear of being tainted with softheadedness.'' This pointed to ''a quiet sea change in how Washington's political class views the United Nations,'' he added.

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''It will be hard for any successor to Holbrooke to give the U.N. this visibility and importance to Washington's movers and shakers,'' said Mr. Laurenti, the association's director of policy studies. ''But his remarkable success to date at the United Nations reflects the very real, if still fragile, American re-engagement with it.''

However, Senator John W. Warner, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said on Friday in a meeting with United Nations officials that Mr. Helms and Mr. Biden were brave to be there. ''No one in the history of the Senate ever got elected on supporting the United Nations,'' said Mr. Warner, a Virginia Republican who also urged the United Nations to make sure that it ran its operations in Bosnia and Kosovo well before plunging into yet more difficult tasks in Africa.

Mr. Holbrooke brushed aside Mr. Warner's statement as political posturing. ''For these Senators to come to the U.N., that's the point,'' he said in an interview yesterday. ''They make those statements later to protect themselves with their constituents.'' He said Senator Helms's visit marked the end of a nadir in American relations with the United Nations, adding, ''The fact that Senator Helms felt it was safe to appear at the U.N. speaks for itself.''

Mr. Holbrooke has his critics, however. In particular, diplomats were puzzled by the absence of a Democrat or an administration official to rebut Mr. Helms when he addressed the council.

Council members who did not understand the political dynamics of the event might have been left with a very bleak view of American attitudes toward the organization, and a sense that foreign policy is made in the Senate, not the State Department or the White House, said one diplomat who attended the session.

Senator Biden made an effort to balance the portrayal of American opinion at a closed-door lunch with diplomats, at which he was outspoken in his disagreements with Mr. Helms.

Mr. Biden also told Secretary General Kofi Annan and reporters that he was not in favor of the benchmarks the Senate placed on payments of debts to the United Nations, which make demands on the organization no country has ever tried to impose.

However, he acknowledged that he did not have the votes to defeat them -- and then defended his decision to agree to those conditions in a deal with Mr. Helms in order to have any money released.

Senator Biden took issue with Mr. Helms's assertion to the council that the United States would withdraw from the United Nations if the organization failed to meet its demands. ''It will never happen,'' Mr. Biden said. He also attacked what he called the ''nostalgia'' for the anticommunist Reagan doctrine, which Mr. Helms had said did more for democracy in the world than the United Nations. ''Thank God it's dead,'' Mr. Biden said.